Newspapers: Fort Beauregard: A Romantic History, Part I; LaSalle Parish, La. Submitted by Jack Willis Date: 16 Oct 2004 Source: From the Jena Times - Olla Tullos Signal, Grass Roots and Cockleburrs...Date: 15 Aug 2001 ************************************************ Submitted to the LAGenWeb Archives ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** *********************************************** Fort Beauregard: A Romantic History By Eli W. Plummer and Jack Morgan Willis Harrisonburg-Under-the-Hill, the county seat of Catahoula Parish since it's creation almost two centuries ago, is today a symbol of quietude, serenity and gracious living; but it has a stormy, tragic and romantic past. Here heroes in gray and butternut brown shed their blood for the lost Cause, carpetbaggers ruled the parish with an iron fist during Reconstruction, and the notorious Jones-Liddell feud finally arrived into a bloody climax. More on that segment later. Harrisonburg's early history is fragmentary, because historical records were ill kept, but supposition is that the town was founded during the period of the cruel Spanish Inquisitions when many political prisoners were tortured and slain in the1700s. It is situated in a Spanish riquet or land grant. The Village of Harrisonburg is located on a site John Harrison acquired from John Hamberlin in the early 1800s, and the resultant village was so named in his honor. From the middle 1800s to the early1900s, during the heyday of the romantic steamboat era, Harrisonburg vied with Columbia and Monroe in importance as a river port and trading center, with farmers from as far away as Centreville (Summerville) selling their cotton and trading for staple goods at the village located at the base of Ouachita upheaval. During high water periods, all western paths of the great Caucasian migration led through Harrisonburg, because the river port was the last opportunity to purchase manufactured goods for the trek to Natchitoches and points west. The port village had the advantage of being located in the foothills of the Ouachita upheaval, safely above overflows, when other port towns of lower elevations were inundated, Harrisonburg was high and dry and commerce went on unperturbed by river level fluctuations. Some of the river packets, which docked at historic Harrisonburg, were the Bob Banks, America, Betsy Ann and the Ouachita, along with many more vessels plying the inland waterways. During the Civil war years, 1861-1865, the transportation of practically all heavy articles and goods was done by steamboat, the reason being that the South only had roughly one-eighth of the rail system enjoyed by their northern counterparts. Soldiers, their equipment, and related materials for making war were delivered by boat, and in turn, tens of thousands of bales of cotton, the lifeblood of the Confederacy were transported out of the Harrisonburg area by packet boat down river for sale in New Orleans for export to England. One treasured photograph showed the Ouachita so laden with cotton bales that all is visible is the pilothouse but this was before Federal blockades effectively closed off all shipping in the latter stages of the war. This act of stopping the South's trade with England sounded an unheard death knell for the Cause because the Confederacy, because of the lack of armament and munitions manufacturing capability, was almost wholly dependent upon England for materials with which to wage war. Rebel forces challenged the Yankee strategy of blockades, by setting up forts along the various rivers for the purpose of sinking Yankee gunboats seeking to control the inland waterways. The Federal gunboats also were engaged in capturing riverboats and deploying Yankee forces where they felt they were needed. The high prominence, where the hills take a precipitous rise on the western side of the village, was an ideal setting for such a fort. The summit commanded a sweeping view of the Ouachita, both upstream and downstream, for a mile or more in each direction. Unfortunately, there are no authentic records of the engineer's identity who drew up the plans and supervised the construction of the battlements of the historic fort, known locally as Fort Hill, but some historians believe that New Orleans native Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard personally oversaw its construction, with other history buffs countering with the notion that he drew the plans for the fortifications based upon surveys furnished by a local Rebel engineer. Whatever his presence represented, it was interspersed with visits to the Davis family, which resided at Centreville some 25 miles to the west at Centreville. Sergeant Allen John Davis became one of Beauregard's personal couriers during the War of northern Aggression. Regardless of who planned or constructed the fort, it was practically impregnable to direct assault featuring great earthen embankments surrounding an earthen rectangle of sufficient size to bivouac a garrison of soldier, their horses, wagons, caissons and equipment. Other embankments criss-crossed this rectangle, perhaps to separate the soldiers from the stables and act as a holding area for the horses. This also provided additional protection in the event that delayed explosion shrapnel shells were "lobbed" up and into the fort. Mazes of underground vaults were dug to store ammunition and provisions for men and horses. Strategically placed trenches and rifle pits surrounded the outer perimeter of the Fort to protect the garrison's artillery. The most effective gunnery they were able to mount was three small three-inch rifles and one 12-pounder howitzer. These were situated where they could sweep the river in the event enemy gunboats approached. The impregnability of Fort Beauregard was soon to be challenged. On May 10th, 1862 Admiral David Porter, Commander of Union Naval Forces on the Mississippi and adjacent waterway, dispatched Commander S.E. Woodworth from the Natchez Base of Operations to proceed up Black River, with three gunboats, with the dual purpose of sinking two small Confederate gunboats, which had escaped to this tributary, and to capture Fort Beauregard and it's garrison. Next Week: Easier Said Than Done! GR&C [8-15-01](Rev.5-04) JMW